Both Near Protocol’s NEAR and Avalanche’s native token AVAX saw strong increases early on Friday, even if the overall market pared gains from earlier in the week. As of press time, NEAR was up 6% and AVAX had gained 8.2% over the previous 24 hours. In comparison, ether fell 3.3% and changed hands for less than $2,000, while bitcoin fell 2.5% during the past day, trading below $36,500.
Avalanche’s inclusion in Project Guardian, the tokenization initiative of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) probably piqued investor interest in its native token, AVAX. JP Morgan’s blockchain-based fixed-income trading network, Onyx, along with Apollo Global, demonstrated a blockchain Proof of Concept for revolutionising asset management under Project Guardian, highlighting how tokenization and smart contracts can improve the efficiency and scalability of financial services, a priority for the Singaporean regulator’s push towards using blockchain for FinTech rather than crypto. Avalanche and the MAS made these announcements simultaneously.
Coinglass data shows that large leveraged position liquidations occurred as a result of the market leaders’ decline; $48 million in long bitcoin positions and $30 million in long ether positions were liquidated in a 24-hour period, respectively. NEAR most likely benefited from a number of encouraging announcements made during the Nearcon conference.
